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RICHMOND--A House committee reversed itself today and approved a bill backed by moderate Republicans to raise almost $1 billion in taxes.
But whether that bill can survive a vote from the full House next week remains to be seen.
With no debate, the House Finance Committee voted 10-8 to report out a bill from committee Chairman Del. Harry Parrish, R-Manassas. The bill would raise the state sales tax a half-cent, raise the cigarette tax, lower the food tax, increase standard deductions on the income tax, and make a few other tax changes.
It's an effort by moderate Republicans to nudge stalled budget negotiations with the Senate.
But while there appear to be at least 17 House Republicans considering a vote for the bill, they're under great pressure to back away from it. And it's not clear if all 17 to 19 Republicans in that group will support Parrish's bill.
Some think it goes too far while others fear it won't go far enough to appease the governor and the Senate.
Seventeen Republican delegates met with Democratic Gov. Mark Warner yesterday afternoon after the House recessed.
Warner called the Parrish bill a "breakthrough"--in a written paragraph read aloud on the House floor by Del. Preston Bryant yesterday. Warner said the bill addresses his goals on tax fairness and meeting core spending commitments.
"Combined with the decision by the Senate leadership to remove the new higher income tax brackets from the Senate proposal, passage of this bill by the House in its current form would be a breakthrough that, in my opinion, will lead to a meaningful compromise by all parties. I will continue to encourage the Senate to move as soon as possible to reach a final budget agreement," Warner said in the statement.
Warner's office would not release the statement itself, but after meeting with the lawmakers, Warner said the Republicans backing the tax proposal are "very bold and courageous."
He also said they "need to be reinforced. I urge those folks not to get browbeat over the next few days."
But anti-tax Republicans said Warner must go further in his support for the bill.
House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford, said the governor needs to make a commitment to sign a budget containing the provisions of the Parrish bill--and no more than those provisions.
"I think a lot of people would feel a lot more comfortable if the governor were to come out with some strong language and said, "This is it. This is as far as I want to go and I'm going to veto anything that comes in [above that]. I'm going to do my best to work with the Senate and make them see that the House has come up to a huge amount of money,'" Howell said.
Even with such a commitment, Howell added, the vote on Parrish's bill is "going to be very close."
House members also fear the Senate's reaction to the proposal. The Senate has been pushing for a 1-cent increase in the sales tax, as well as other tax changes that go far beyond those embodied in Parrish's bill.
Bryant said Tuesday that members of the Senate leadership had promised him that they would back away from the income tax component of their budget--they wanted an additional tax bracket for high-income earners--in exchange for the House's approval of the Parrish bill.
Sen. John Chichester, R-Stafford, the lead Senate budget negotiator, did not dispute that yesterday, although he said he had not talked to Bryant himself.
But Chichester also declined to speculate on whether the Senate might be willing to accept the Parrish proposal.
"We'll treat the bill just like we treat all the rest of the bills. We'll send it to committee and deliberate on it," Chichester said. "There's nothing before us. There's a bill I understand that's come out of a committee, and it's not been passed, and there's room for floor amendments to pass judgment before the bill gets to us would defy logic."
Chichester also said the House's request that the Senate make a commitment before the House will pass the bill is "very unusual."
On Tuesday, the House Finance Committee had tabled the Parrish bill, surprising even its own patron, who had expected the committee to approve the bill. That expectation arose because Howell had promised moderates in his caucus that he would encourage members of the committee to put a tax increase bill before the full House.
But committee members apparently had not agreed to that as of Tuesday. By yesterday morning, however, four conservative Republicans had been persuaded to "take a walk"--not show up for the committee meeting--so that the bill could be approved without them.
Del. Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania, was one of those four.
"Leadership had promised to get the bill to the floor, and I certainly cannot support it, so I was asked not to attend the meeting," Cole said later.
Asked if he was OK with that approach, Cole answered, "not really."
"It's nearly a billion-dollar tax increase, and it's the wrong way for us to go," he added. "This is the wrong time to be raising taxes, period. I don't think the House needs to be held hostage to a tax increase from the Senate or the governor."
Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Caroline, did vote for Parrish's bill in committee but said he will vote against it on the floor.
Orrock had introduced his own bill that raised the sales tax a half-cent but did not touch any other taxes. He thinks Parrish's bill is too much.
"Looking at a bargaining position, this goes a little too far," Orrock said. He added that should Parrish's bill fail, his own bill remains in the committee as a fall-back position, another way to try to end the budget impasse.
"All of us have felt we've been in the 11th hour for a number of days," Orrock said. "We're in double overtime now, and we've got to bring some closure to this game."
To reach CHELYEN DAVIS: 804/782-9362 cdavis@freelancestar.com